Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined

I felt a tingling going through me and I fell to the floor with the others. Such a crying and a wailing, and all our private anguishes emptying from us, rushing forth, like a creek into a river, and all the rivers to the ocean. The window glass vibrated with the stomping of the floor and the pounding of the benches, like breakers on the shore, and the holy power of Joshua filled that room to where it seemed the very walls would crash into splinters at his command.

Corvallis, Oregon, is a sleepy town in 1903. An ordinary town.

Then Joshua arrives, and nothing will ever be the same again. A young and charismatic preacher, Joshua wins converts to his fiery brand of Christianity and casts his spell over the town's young women. Insisting on simplicity, he commands them to burn their worldly possessions. Demanding devotion to Christ, he tells them to abandon their domestic duties.

But strange rumors begin to surface, and the smoldering suspicions of the fathers and sweethearts of Joshua's devoted followers soon explode into rage. Before it's all over, families will be torn apart and lives will be lost.

In this true, stranger-than-fiction tale, sixteen-year-old Eva Mae tells of the excitement and horror of being swept up in a group bearing an uncanny resemblance to contemporary "End Time" cults. Her gripping story remindsus that no one is entirely immune to the power of a single charismatic voice heard at a vulnerable time.

A graduate of the University of Oregon, Crew is the author of Fire on the Wind, Long Time Passing, and the award-winning Children of the River. She lives at Wake Robin Farm, in Corvallis With her husband and children.